Luggage? Really?

I am pro recycling. I think we throw too many things in the garbage that can and should be recycled or reused.
In Nazare recycling can seem like a lot of work. There are lots of places to drop off your garbage, but a limited number of bins for recycling tin, paper, glass etc. The recycling bins nearest to the apartment are by the taxi stand across town. The taxi drivers line the benches along the street waiting for fares and keeping up on the town's comings and goings. At first they looked at me very questioningly as I dragged bags of stuff the bins. Now that it or I has become a regular occurrence they smile at me rather than shaking their heads in confusion.
My only convenient recycling bin is for wine bottles. That has come in handy as I have developed a taste for vinho verde and that has led to a lot of wine bottles for the recycling department.
Friday I landed in Lisbon after a week long visit to meet my new niece Emily. She is beautiful, pink, and has the newborne cone topper. (Jen is a small woman and us Chambers' have big noggins. Some have even been compared to pumpkins.) There I saw evidence of of a re-user that tested the limits of the usefulness of the idea. As luggage started coming off the plane a slightly used sun umbrella came tumbling down along with all the bags. The umbrellas here run from four to ten euro, so I have to question the sense of dragging one from Germany to Lisbon. It would seem the carbon footprint of that umbrella would be rather more than buying one in Portugal and gifting it to some beach family as you leave town.
Then again i just increased my carbon footprint enormously in order to meet my new niece. That umbrella must really be loved.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Canada.
A new Irish Bar opened in Nazare this weekend. Last night Michael and I went there to have a drink and help support the new establishment. I was almost overcome with joy to see that they had cranberry juice. I have been looking in the supermarkets and corner stores hoping to find some. I've seen mango, papaya, pomegranite, and a variety of orange and apple juices, but no cranberry. That all changed last night.
To celebrate Canada's birthday I will be helping Carlos learn how to shake a Cosmo (martini). Vodka, Cranberry, Lemon/Lime and ice. If only someone would import Hawkins Cheezies i would be in heaven.

I attract crazy people. Apparently Kootenay does nothing to repel them. We walk the seawall everyday. There we have met lots of nice people. We met Vitor and Spock, Dalmatian Dad, Pete, Daniel, Bruno, Greyhound Guy, and Long Hair just to name a few.
We have also met some odd balls. One guy wanted us to walk in the forest with him. Another wanted us to walk out to the lighthouse with him. One guy, who looked to be about sixty wanted us to come home with him and have dinner with his mother. Common sense and caution have kept me from taking up any of those offers.
Yesterday's odd ball was the best so far. I was sitting at Farol (coffee shop) working on my novel and was wearing earphone listening to Jenny Owen Youngs' new music (Love it). I heard the chair across from me being pulled back from the table. I was expecting Michael and Chris so I looked up and smiled. Sitting there was Joseph. I know this because he introduced himself to me and asked to buy me a drink. I declined the drink and started back at my computer.
"Nice dog" he says.
"Thank you" I respond cautiously. I didn't want to be dismissive, but my crazy-o-meter started to sound.
He is from Fatima, works in the tourism business, lives with his mom, is single, and likes to use his english.
Wow. All that information while I desperately scan the crowd in the Plaza hoping to catch sight of Michael.
Joseph calls over Barbara, my cool Brazilian waitress who graciously allows me to take up an outside table and moves the giant umbrella that keeps my pasty white skin from burning. I like her.
"Men in Portugal always pay for ladies' drinks." He tells me. As I didn't allow him to buy me a new drink he has asked Barbara to bring him my tab for the drinks I had before he got there. I only realize this after Barbara brings him a bill. The fast paced singsong Portuguese he and Barbara shared was more than my little brain could piece together. Lentamente. Slowly. A word I use often. How am I going to extract myself from this? And if a Portuguese guy spends 1.50 euros on you what does he expect?
I figure I won't have to worry about this because I see Michael and his friend Chris making their way to my table.
"We can find a free table" Chris says smiling "If you are busy." There is an implied wink in his gaze.
Luckily Michael is a better judge of what is going on and sits down. Phew!
Joseph quickly realizes that Michael and Chris couldn't fill the role in my life that he sees for himself. (They are gay. In case you weren't aware.)
As we all get settled and Michael and Chris pull out their playing cards I feel something on my toes. My first thought is that my feet are in the way of Michael's. I pull my feet back under my chair to make more room for him. Now i feel something moving up my leg. This isn't incidental contact.
Joseph now knows that it has been some time since I last shaved my legs. What the hell....
A big dog is supposed to save you from things like this. I look around for Kootenay. There she is with her head in the lap of Book Boy. Can't blame her. He is cute. Why isn't it his feet I am wrestling with under the table.

How to Squeeze a Week into Three Days

Combria. What kind of town has a jail inside its borders and one that is right beside a major university? When you see the jail’s cobblestone roads, turret, and palm trees it is hard to remember that it is a jail. Although, having lived without central heating for a while now the thought of rooms in a stone building have no romance for me. Di, Ro, and I looked like crazy tourists. Here we were taking pictures of a jail. It looked remarkably similar to the crumbling castles and stone churches that are found in every town you stop in Europe.

We had our guidebooks and our town maps to direct our wanderings. We headed through the Botanical Gardens of the University, the University of Coimbra, along the old city wall and the Mondego River bank and then when the day was ending we made our way to the centro commerical. Hello H&M! I have been wearing the same four pair of pants and three skirts all winter. At H&M I added a new skirt, new pair of pants, and four new t-shirts. All for under 50 euros! While we were travelling thru Spain and Portugal our first stop in every town has been the Turismo Information building. They will answer questions in english and provide maps. Just follow the target signs, if you can.

Signs and traffic circles make European driving a challenge. It all seems easy. You look for the town you want, you plot a course on your map and off you go. Then the city you are looking for falls off the signs, the traffic circle confuses you, and the guy behind you is blinking his lights to pass because you are only going 140 km/hr and you are not sure where you put the toll ticket you picked up at the entrance to the highway… But, enough about our drive to Coimbra.

The next day we headed off to Porto, or Oporto as it is known on the map. This is a seriously old city, and I had my guidebook with me to fill Di and Ro in on all sorts of friendly facts. Like the story about the Revolt of the Drunks. There is a revolution to get behind. Our first stop was to be Vila Nova de Gaia. Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto are separated by the Douro River. There, along the riverbank, are all the Port houses. Although this was our destination, we ended up there quite by accident. After half an hour of driving in circles and getting lost in narrow windy streets we decided to head into Porto. We could see the Don Luis Bridge which connects to two cities. It bares more than a passing resemblance to the Effiel Tower. Which is probably because one of Eiffel’s students built it. We just had to figure out how to get onto it. While we were trying to get to the bridge we drove right in front of the port houses and there was a parking spot waiting for us. A shout out to the parking gods! Poor Ro. Our tour of the port house was very touristy. A man in a cape recited the history of Sandeman sherry and port in heavily accented English to us, and 15 of our closest family and friends. There was nothing very local or even Portuguese about it. We got to see the kegs, hear the lecture and watch a movie about the history of Port and the region. The saving grace for Ro was the free port at the end of the tour.

Then we were off to Porto. After we settled into our hotel for the night we headed out to see the town. The center of Porto is odd. There doesn’t seem to be a plan to maintain the fantastic old buildings that line the streets. And at street level it is not uncommon to see the bottom two floors of a building abandoned with crumbling walls. Then when you look up you the top floors of the building will have laundry hanging out and lovely plants climbing down the walls. My old strata council would have a stroke at the sight of some of the balconies. Laundry! And out of control plant growth! You walk through some really abandon streets and the grey stone buildings seem to soak up any light the little streetlights put out. That along with the buckets of rain we experienced made for a ghostly evening.

We wandered past the Sao Bento train station, city hall, the fanciest McDonalds I have ever seen and ended up down on the shores of the Douro river. While we were wandering along the rain started. I rained so hard you could have stayed dryer standing in your shower. So we headed into a restaurant for dinner and to try and warm up. I think the fact that they were playing a football/soccer game on the television swayed the decision making process.

After dinner we had to hike up the wet streets to get back to our hotel. Roberto has a great internal compass. I was lost. But for Ro leading the way, I would have been lost in the bowels of Porto forever. I will confess. I didn’t believe in him, and was ready to hop a cab, but just when I lost all faith we ended up back at our hotel. Tired, damp and full.

The next day was equally busy. We managed to see Torre dos Clerigos, Oporto Cathedral, Lello Bookstore, Igreja dos Clerigos, and Palacio de Cristal. These feet were made for walkin’. All that and then we headed back to Nazare. This time the drive went a little faster. We made it back in time to go out for dinner and drinks with friends. Di and Ro chose to go home at a better hour than I did. I ended up at Abiliu’s café Concerto until way too late listening to the Spanish Guitar and Portuguese singing. Anyone heading to town should check it out. The address is Ru Gil Vicente, 38. Or you can call me and I can meet you there if you want.

And Kootenay missed it all. She stayed home and had a sleep over with her friends Spock, Sofi and Vitor. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be a dog.

A Visit Starts

I have been loafing around lately. Sorry to all my dedicated readers. But the tale I am about to tell you will give you some idea what I have been up to and why a bit of down time was needed.

Diane (a friend for many years) and Roberto (her devoted manservant) came to visit. They were only here for three weeks, but they packed in the sightseeing. While they were here we went to Porto, Coimbra, Tavira, Obidos, and various other towns that placed themselves between our daily destinations and us.

Di and Ro saw even more of Portugal. They added Evora and few small towns in the Algarve to their schedule. And this was all done before we hit Spain.

In Spain we managed to see Ronda, Gaucin, Sevilla, Malaga, and Jerez. The Spanish weather was challenging. While we were visiting Ronda, the wind blew so hard the rain accompanying it seemed to be coming at you horizontally. The umbrella merchants were pleased because that day umbrellas lasted between five and ten minutes. Then the wind would turn them inside out. There were a lot of garbage tins filled with discarded umbrellas around town.

But, back to Portugal... Di and Ro turned up a few days early and few dollars short. Kootenay and I were doing one of our many nightly walks on the beach, when a head popped out of a car and called her. I turned and there they were, arriving early, and me with a dirty bathroom. Damn. Their first few days on vacation had been challenging. First their luggage was lost, and in the course of getting it back they learned that in Spain not only is the customer not always right, but also the customer can actually be an inconvenience. I shudder at what UBC’s “secret shoppers” would say about interactions with Spanish customer service workers. But,they got their bags back eventually, and headed to Lisboa. They hadn't reserved a place to stay so they came straight to Nazare to regroup. Unfortunately I didn’t realize they were doing this or I would have given them my Portuguese highway tip. Always Always Always get a ticket at the toll center when you enter a highway. Or, you will end up donating to the “Portuguese Road Improvement Fund”. So after lost luggage, toll fines, and some generally crappy weather they unpacked in Nazare and we headed out to have dinner and celebrate Roberto’s birthday.

One of my earliest memories of hanging out with Diane, outside of the UBC Bookstore where we worked, was of going to a Crowded House concert. On Roberto’s birthday we headed down to NBar where Carlos kept our glasses sociably full and there was a band. Almost twenty years after we met Diane and I sat and enjoyed a drink listening to Crowded House songs. These ones were sung with a bit of a Portuguese accent, but that only made the experience better.

And this was just our first day together. Wait until i tell you about trying to follow them through Seville's rush hour traffic in a rented Fiat.

Waves

When I ask people around here what their favorite thing about the town is the answer is usually “The Waves”. Watching the ocean trying to steal back the land here is more than a pastime. Older men sit on the seawall benches deliberating the world and their place in it. I see them every morning. They look out to the ocean and carry on conversations that I will never understand. The Nazare way of speaking Portuguese is so fast that I fear I will never understand it.

When I asked Beto (one of the guys who works at the Centro-cultural) what his favorite thing about Nazare was he immediately said the waves. At first I thought he said wives and that he was a little dirty and a little intriguing. But, looking at him I knew he meant waves.

Are you a surfer? I asked.

Yes. He replied smiling.

That made more sense. Although, I kinda liked my first understanding better.

Carlos talked about how amazing the waves were when they came all the way up to the seawall. I heard him talk about them, but I didn’t really believe him. Only now can I understand that I doubted him.

Kootenay and I went for a walk on the seawall at midnight. The waves were enormous and they crawled toward the town. They had to be six meters high. Wow, I thought, this is what Carlos was talking about, then, K and turned around and headed back home.

When I first arrived in Nazare the waves kept me up at night. My family and I travelled through Thailand the winter that the big tsunami hit. We were just getting on the plane as the first bits of information were making their way to the news. When we landed in Hong Kong for a stopover, we were held up while they made sure that our destination, Bangkok, was not going to be affected by any aftershocks. Then, we made our way to Thailand and headed up north. We were quite sheltered by our non-existent Thai from the news. It was only when we headed back down south to Koh Samui that the extent of the devastation become apparent. On our return to the south we landed in the Bangkok airport. The average institutional airport that we left had been turned into what looked like a war zone command center. The institutional beige walls were now covered with missing posters and as you left your flight, embassies lined the hallways asking people to register with them so they could better estimate the missing. We were not directly affected by the wave but I was concerned about the morality of trying to enjoy a vacation in a country so wracked by tragedy.

The Thai people begged us to stay. Good for you. Good for Thailand. These words were used over and over by people talking to us. So we stayed. Loved the country, the people and the food, and returned home with a conflicted feeling about our time away.

Until I arrived in Nazare, I did not realize how deeply the trip had affected me.
My first two weeks here I spent listening to the waves at night with an anxiety that took me days to understand. After a week or so I started to love the sound of the waves at night. They lulled me to sleep.

And so I tucked into bed with the sound of the waves in the background thinking that I understood what Carlos had been talking about. That night walking Kootenay the waves seemed huge.

That all changed in the morning. K and I got up to do our morning walk. As we headed to the beach I noticed that there seemed to be more people than normal on the streets, and fewer cars than I was used to. By the time we were down the hill I could see that the night had changed the sea front of the town. There was sand and water covering the first two blocks. And the reason there were so few cars was that the street was covered with sand and receding water. Storefront windows had been broken and water flowed in and out at will.

And I, with my newfound comfort in the sound of waves had slept through it all.

Alentejo Blue Baby

I am back from Alentejo. It was great. After reading guidebooks and Monica Ali’s book Alentejo Blue I was prepared to find a depressed area filled with old people that was as flat as the prairies and as dry as Nevada. But instead I found myself riding a horse along a reservoir created by the Alqueva Dam. It was beautiful. There was olive, orange, lemon and cork trees. And the Gaudiana River, which feeds a patchwork of small local farms, excited Kootenay. I had to keep her on a leash or I would have had one very wet dog. I don’t think Vitor would have wanted her dripping all over his nice leather seats.

When Sofi and Vitor offered me the chance to tag along with them to see the area I took them up on it. We piled the three of us, and two dogs into Vitor’s car and headed out. I was prepared for a road trip Canadian style. You get up in the morning and drive all day, with hours of driving separating cities. Here is it a little different. We left Nazare at about 11 and promptly stopped for some breakfast. Then we drove to Evora. This took maybe two and a half hours.

Evora is a beautiful old town with an ancient core that is a UNESCO heritage site. It also houses a very modern university. We strolled through the center of the city had lunch and took in the Diana Temple, which is really the Roman Temple of Evora. Then we were off to our hotel.

The cork trees we passed along the way are really cool. Their bark is harvested about every ten years. The tree is stripped of its bark leaving it with a rusty red trunk. Eventually the bark grows back leaving it ready to be stripped once again. The yummy black pig hangs out underneath and eats the acorns that fall from the tree. So the tree is responsible for the cork in the wine and the yummy dinner that I had with it. You gotta love a tree that committed to my happiness.

We stayed at Horta Da Moura. It is an old family farm that has been transformed into a hotel as part of a rural tourism program in Portugal. On our first night we went into Monsaraz for dinner. The hotel recommended we try O Alcaide. Great suggestion. That is where I first tasted black pork. The pig is black not the meat. Yummy. And the potatoes that we were served were fantastic. They were cut like potato chips and then fried and salted. With a little local red wine to wash it down with I was a happy girl.

The next day we went back to the town for lunch and tried another restaurant. Vitor ordered the meal of the day that day. He had Alentejo pork. It is small cubes of pork served with clams or mussels and a wine and paprika sauce. This time we tired a local wine that was produced for the restaurant. The Portuguese know how to flavour pork and how to make wine. The total bill for two jugs of wine, three lunches, fresh cheese, olives, and bread came to about thirty euros, pretty damn reasonable to me.

Monsaraz is a tiny town/castle that sits on top of a hill keeping on eye on Spain. It is a pre-historic town that has had many occupiers. Right now there are about 60 residents and the day we were there; twice that many tourists. Cobblestone streets, white washed houses with the Alentejo blue trim, and bull fighting rings were the amongst the sites.

Somehow we also managed to find ourselves heading to Spain looking for cheese to go with the local wine we had picked up. Unfortunately for Spain everything was closed. So we took a quick look at another castle and headed back to Portugal. We stopped just across the border and found a local cheese maker and some crackers and made it back to Horta da Moura in time for dinner.

Quite a weekend eh… and I am haven’t even told you about the lunch on the way home (great in case you were wondering) and the fantastic view from the windmill that I now want to buy and live in.

Check out Vitor's website to see the pictures.

Hot Water Anyone?

From 36 hours to 3.6 minutes.
The hot water tank and stove are run on butane gas. You have to get the tank from a shop down the street. Drag it home. Hook it up. And then light the pilot light for the hot water tank. The stove you light each time you use an element.
A cousin of my friend Isabel showed my how to do this when I first arrived in Nazare. It took me three months to burn through that first tank. In February I had to do the first switch. Unhooking the tank was really easy. Hooking it back up proved to be more problematic. Although I thought I was paying attention to the steps when I first saw them when I tried to repeat them I could not get the gas to flow. I could not figure out how to get the hose attachment secured to the tank. I kept trying over and over again, but I was doing the same steps. So I kept getting the same result. No flame.
After a few hours of this I thought I would get my dictionary out and ask my neighbour for help. My neighbour is a tough old lady. I can hear her yelling at her kids, grandkids, neighbourhood dogs, and neighbours through the walls. She runs a tight ship. I figured she would be able to help me out. I went and knocked on her door with my little Portuguese phrase book. She couldn’t understand a thing that I was saying. She just kept smiling and nodding. I motioned for her to come with me. Then showed her the tank and the hose. AH…. She says. Then she shook her head. No No she says and taps her chest. My Yuri. Then she smiled and walked away. She wasn’t going to be any help.
I decided to leave it unhooked. I figured if I went for a walk, and got a pizza I could look at it with fresh eyes. It took until the next morning for me to realize what I had been doing wrong. All I had to do was turn the lever on the hose the other direction. Thirty-six hours to realize this. I relit the pilot light on the hot water tank and took a shower to celebrate. I had started to smell worse than Kootenay.
Last week I ran out of gas again. This time I managed to unhook the empty tank, hook up the new full one, and relight the hot water heater in under 4 minutes. This old dog learned a new trick

Friends!!

I have two friends…. Okay. So I have a few friends at home, but here I haven’t made real friends until now. Vitor works at the cultural center and is a great photographer. Sofi is his partner. Sofi and I don’t know each other very well, but she offered to teach me some Portuguese. Hopefully she will still hang out with me when she finds out how hopeless I am at languages.

They are coming over for dinner tonight. Last week they had me over and made a really yummy duck and rice casserole. We drank a few bottles of wine and had a lovely time.

How did she meet them, you may be asking yourself. Well. One night I was walking Kootenay and Vitor was walking Spock, who may be cuter than Kootenay. We stopped to chat and it turns out that we had run into each other at the Cultural Center. It took the dogs to get us to chat long enough to make friends.

So tonight I am going to try and make garlic ginger chicken with rice. Hopefully I can pull it off with my two elements and electric frying pan. I have few bottles of wine and some bread and cheese if the dinner doesn’t turn out.

Life

You are more emotional now that the Moon is in Aquarius, but you also may feel a bit isolated. You may think you need to show up and do your job, without making a big deal about your unfulfilled needs. You may not be able to solve your current problem on your own, so find an appropriate way to bring your questions out into the open.

This is what Rick Levine has to say about my little aquarian life. It is a bit creepy how much I identify with it right now.

This morning I sat on the beach with Kootenay and contemplated the big questions. You know… Who am I? Where am I going? Where is home? Where do I belong? What do I want my life to be?

When I started the day I had every intention of writing, but instead I watched the sea boil around Pedra do Guilhim. The photo doesn’t do justice to how big the outcropping is. It was amazing to see. Sitting there I realized that I seldom do something without thinking about what is next.

As Rick says that I may not be able to solve my current problems on my own, I am sending these thoughts out into the ether.

Carnaval or for you in Canada Carnival

Each month Nazare comes up with some reason to celebrate. The biggest celebration was during Carnaval. If you link to the description you will probably come away from reading it almost as confused as was experiencing it.

Apparently, if you want to build a float or be part of the parade you dream up your costume and then send your list of supplies to the local municipality. They have a warehouse space where you can work and store your creation and they will supply you with any materials that you need. There were floats on the back of flatbed trucks, cars with streamers, dogs in costumes, kids dressed as super heroes and bums, and wave after wave of women dressed in matching outfits each group dancing to its own song.

If you ask the people here what makes their Carnaval special they all answer the same thing. It is a local celebration… Not a copy of Brazil’s. Then they will shake their head and name a few Portuguese towns that are too “Brazil”. People who grew up here, people born elsewhere but whose parents were born here, and people who now live here all call themselves local. I don’t know enough Portuguese to understand the politics of these groups and know who truly is local, but during Carnaval they all claim local status.

The soundtrack to Carnaval is local. Even without an understanding of Portuguese you can make out the word Nazare in all the songs. By the end of the celebration I wanted to hunt down every copy of all the songs and erase them from the public domain. Now I kinda miss it.

People dress up and dance in the streets. There is a type of public joy you don’t see in Canada. You see people wearing elaborate costumes and right next to them people wearing long johns with a clown wig. And, each person is genuinely excited about the others costume. There is also a tremendous amount of drinking going on. And there is dance. Dance exists everywhere during this time. My favourite moments were when you would see grown men dancing with young girls. The costumed girls and their dad’s/uncle’s/family friend’s spontaneously dance in the streets.

At the start of carnival I woke up to the sound of drums. There appear to be large groups of drummers who parade down the main street drumming. They all wear uniforms and drum. To an outsider there seems to be very little organization behind who drums and marches and when. I am sure there are rules, but they elude me.

Here are the official Canaval photos. Take a look for yourself.

Obrigadinia!

I had visitors this week. Three friends from Robson came to town and they dragged with them a friend of theirs from Lisbon. Hopefully he will be a new friend for me as well, when he gets over how disgracefully drunk I got in his presence. These girls are quite a combo. Keenan has a way of making a paper bag fun. Elsa has a grace about her that I quite envy. Laura is starting on her first solo travel experience and I hope it is as fun as she is. Jayme is a friend of Keenan’s and I am really glad to have met him. The four of them shook me out of my routine. We travelled to Fatima, Alcobaca, and Batalha. While we were spared the burden of a vision of Mary, we did see some great sites. There was a true devotee in Fatima who crawled on her knees to the shrine for worship. If only my beliefs were as devote and clear.

We then hit up a local bar and managed to embody the best and worst images of travelling girls. I need to apologize to MVS for the drunk dialing we did. I know how little he cares of it, but we did it anyway. We missed our other Robson folks and wanted to say hi. Elsa managed to captivate a lovely Portuguese flyboy named Carlos and later two cute Italians. Although I understand now that all the email address have gone missing. I guess fate will be in control of the future. Keenan managed to captivate the rest of bar. The owner even started buying us a few free rounds. This was the beginning of my downfall I think. And Laura did not smoke while she was there. I crushed a little on our bar manager Carlos. Who is a lovely guy and I am sure he and his girlfriend will be very happy together. Oh well. Hopefully he will turn into another English speaking friend for me. We helped him close down the bar and then everyone headed back to my place. Why I don’t know. After we got there I remembered that we had drank all the alcohol there before we left. But, that is probably a good thing. I don’t know that I would have had the sense to stop if there had been more. As it was, I spent the next day almost entirely on the sofa. I only got up to walk the dog, shower, drink some water and take Tylenol.

In Portugal waiters will often bring things to your table that you have not ordered. If you eat them you pay for them. This custom drives me a little nuts, because it is not always universally applied. The first night the gang arrived we headed out to dinner. The waiter brought us buns, olives, and cheese before we had even ordered. Luckily they are all so yummy that if you know you are paying for them, you are happy to see them. When poor Carlos (bar manager) brought us a bowl of faba beans to snack on that night we immediately asked… how much. The concern about charges makes it difficult to be gracious. They were free, not particularly tasty, and we ate bowl after bowl.

So, thanks to Keenan, Elsa, Laura, Jayme, and Carlos for such an enjoyable few days.

Now back to work. A novel won’t write itself.

What Up?

I have a question for the men of Portugal.

What is up with the manshake?

There seems to be a complicated number of hand movements that are required each time you see each other. There is the palm slap, the back of the hand slap, the fist bumping top, bottom and knuckle to knuckle. And, all this is often followed by the lean in chest bump with your arms curling around the back of your friend. This is not quite a hug, but more close contact than I am used to seeing in men or boys.

I asked a new friend about this the other day. He is partially Portuguese and is living in Lisbon right now. He had now idea what it is about, but when I asked him about it he new immediately what I was talking about. He has seen it as well.

I see it everywhere. The guys who come into the Centro Cultural where I spend my afternoons trying to write engage in varying degrees of it. Each pair seems to have a different set of motions they go through. I wonder if the level of intimacy between the shakers sets up the guidelines for what they do.

Casual friends = bank of hand and palm slap
School Chums = do the above and add fist bump
Close Friends = do all of the above and add the chest bump

Jayme has even seen the ticket checkers on the subway doing it. It is everywhere man.

So there is my question.

0h by the way, I love the eyeglasses and shoes you wear.

Wine Anyone?

Portuguese wine rocks. I was going to dinner at a new friend’s house the other night. Wanting to be a good dinner guest I made my way to the wine store to bring an offering. When i say wine store i mean store that has wine. Because, here you can buy wine at the supermarket, at the corner store, at the shoe store….
I went to a store down the street. It specialized in wine and hand woven cotton mats. How these two services found a home together is beyond my grasp of Portuguese. But, they have, and this is where I went to get a bottle of wine. I have been drinking vihno verde. This is a cheap white wine that has a bit of a sparkle to it. I love it. If you can find it go get it. Here it runs about 2.95 euros per bottle.
But, as I was a guest, I thought I should splurge on a nice bottle of red. There were three types of wine over 20 euros. There were a ton of wines for less than 4 euros. It turns out that splurging here is about 7 euros. So I splashed out. I bought an 8 euro bottle of wine and was assured by the man behind the rug counter that my dinner companions would like it. I am used to BC wine prices. I almost felt bad bringing a bottle that seems so cheap.
My hosts were suitable impressed.

Language Barrier

Kootenay and I had the ultimate inter-cultural experience the other day. We were doing our usual morning beach routine. I had a nice cup of tea in my travel mug and was enjoying it in the sun while Koot ran after her ball.

A bus loaded with tourists pulled up and off loaded fifty or so Japanese tourists. When they walked down the seawall one woman caught sight of Kootenay playing and was overcome with excitement. She stood beside me and laughed and giggled each time Kootenay caught the ball and then applauded when K brought it back to us. After a few minutes of this we ended up with the busload of people standing around us. Then Koot’s original fan started to ask me a question. Despite the language barrier I quickly caught on that she wanted to take her picture with K. Not with me.

The tour guide came up to me to ask me some questions. This is where things got complicated. I had no idea what he was saying. I told him, in my best Portuguese, that I spoke English and was from Canada. Turns out that he could speak a bit of French. So I stretched my high school French and came to understand that all of the women from the bus wanted their pictures taken with K. I asked the guide if they knew that she wasn’t Portuguese. He indicated that they did, but they didn’t care.

So now pictures of Kootenay on a beach in Portugal will be in the holiday albums of about thirty Japanese families.

Missing

People have been asking me what I miss. Living here has meant that I have had to adjust. Food tastes different here. There is more seafood than I am comfortable with. My hot water tank and stove run off a tank of butane that I must refill. And, lighting the pilot light for the hat water is not easy. It is also difficult when you don’t speak the same language as the people around you. It can make a task like getting a cell phone fixed a real challenge. It took me three weeks of going from store to store until I found a place that both sold my phone and had someone working there who was willing to use their little bit of English, my little bit or Portuguese and sign language to help me fix the problem. Mostly it is family and friends that I miss. But, there are some comforting things I miss…

I miss Hawkins Cheezies. Little crunchy bits of heaven. The junk food here runs mainly to sweets, and I am a savoury girl.

I miss good loose tea. Luckily I brought with me a few bags of Creamy Earl Grey tea with me, but I am running out.

I miss bags for picking up dog poo. I haven’t been here long enough to just leave it where it falls, like the locals do. I went out and bought some cheap sandwich bags that I use, but see through poo bags are a little gross.

Kootenay misses a few things as well.

She misses her Kong, which I forgot at home. Now if I leave the house without her she gets a treat, but it doesn’t last long.

She misses the little orange balls that are usually used by road hockey players. But for her, they are things to run after that don’t fall apart halfway through a good came of fetch. Tennis balls are too easy to crush.